Pages

December 26, 2013

Comm WS Pune: Q & A part 4 and last

Friends, here are the last set of questions from Pune Comm WS.

Children

After what age, can we guarantee
that the child will not stammer?

If a child is going to recover (with or
without therapy), he would do so by 10-14 years of age. Sometime,
though rare, a child who stammers from childhood may become alright
between 14-20 years. If stammering has persisted till 20, in my
opinion, chances of recovery on their own is very rare. Sometime,
later on in life, due to stroke, a non-stammering adult may develop
stammering suddenly. So, giving guarantees is difficult.

You may feel more in control of
conversation but on the whole things may not change very much. You
may still have to work hard at that presentation (fluency does not
fool anyone), at your work (your colleagues may expect even more from
you); you will still have to work hard to have a successful meeting
with the client. Dating may still pose problems- but of other kinds.
You may still get fired for poor performance.

Because, judge for yourself: will you
buy a washing machine just because the salesman is fluent? Will you
hire a typist just because he does not stammer?

But yes, where we are at the moment, it
may seem very romantic: If I could just be free of stammering,
life will be so easy and beautiful.

I think we can learn a lot from people
who win jackpot (big lottery). Life becomes quite stressful, instead
of becoming “easy” after winning it (link).

But if you become a good communicator,
using a self-therapy approach, you may become more self-confident;
you may understand that communication is more than fluency and
therefore, may become a very thoughtful and good communicator and
conversation partner. You may feel more in charge of your life.
Difficulties may still come, but you will feel: I have dealt with
one big issue of my life already. I can deal with this too...

We can do practice but I wanted to
know what behavior changes we need to bring in our life?

We need to be less fearful and more
courageous, especially when it comes to communication: If we have
made up our mind to maintain eye contact, smile and say “Gu- Gu-
Goodmorning”, we should stick to the plan and not change it at the
last minute out of some strange sudden fear.. We should become more
and more courageous in these interactions with others and we should
also be at peace with ourselves: if someone asks- do you stammer? We
should be able to calmly say “yes”- because that is a fact and
there is no point in fighting what is fact. These qualities will
bring in other behavior changes gradually.

Why do we give more importance to
speech and tend to speak more (than necessary)? How to control that?

Silence is integral part of speech.
But, we often develop an obsession to prove that Ican
speak as well as that other person. Driven by this psychological
urge to prove, we overdo it and kill the spirit of communication in
the process. To deal with this- one could observe carefully how
others and good speakers talk, use pauses in between and listen to
the other person as well. Vipassana is another good method to “see”
your psychological urges, obsessions and drives- and change them for
good.

Whenever we fail – we give
stammering as the drawback..

Yes, that is right. We do it all the
time. There are websites, cure centers and therapists- who help us in
this process. They assure us: Once you cure your stammering, you will
easily earn lakhs of rupees... or emotionally blackmail parents: One
day your child will blame you that you did not get his stammering
cured etc.

No one denies that stammering does
cause some problems, to some people, some of the time. But there are
many people, with bigger problems (like paraplegics), who are
achieving every worthwhile thing in life. If you look around, there
are many pws, who have been successful in life, WITH their
stammering. An American SLP once highlighted this and said: Your
stammering is not the problem as you may think, nor your fluency the
asset.

This is because of cognitive
distortion, affecting our brains as we grow up; this term means the
bias with which we tend to see and interpret the world around us and
the various events: If we fail an interview, we rarely stop to
analyze the reasons objectively. We just blame it on our stammering
and panels' reaction to it. We do not take notice of the fact that
there were thousand others, who did not stammer, and yet, were not
selected.

I think it is time, we stopped blaming
“poor stammering” and the world, and began to work on ourselves:
our technical and communication skills, our soft skills, our
mind-body, our attitude to life and others etc.

Visitors

What is TISA

TISA is an association of Indian people who stammer (IPWS). Its purpose is to collect and disseminate relevant, correct and unbiased information for people who stammer and their families, friends and society in general. It is promoting a self help group movement, where PWS learn to help each other and themselves in the ancient Indian spirit: “This Self is to be achieved through self effort!”

In order to become its member, you just have to participate in its activities- SHG, workshops, get-together etc. This blog has migrated to http://stammer.in/ - our main website.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianPWS/ is the chat group where we, the IPWS meet and discuss issues and plans, while this blog continues to be available as an archive. Personally identifiable information has therefore been suppressed wherever necessary or requested. Our intention is to reflect the diversity of this land and represent the Indian slant on the issues, opinions and perspectives related to stammering. Stammering and stuttering have been used in the same sense.